The secret behind the effectiveness of customer feedback

No matter how good and careful you are with your customers, it’s very likely that some of them will have a bad experience at some point. The worst part is that you probably won’t ever be aware of most of the situations. According to White House Office of Consumer Affairs,

For every customer who bothers to complain, 26 other customers remain silent.

Small niggles build up and, unfortunately, the customer becomes dissatisfied, thus becomes more perceptive to a pitch from a competitor. Eventually, you wonder why you don’t hear from that customer again…
That is exactly why, according to Marketing at Work, businesses lose between 10% and 25% of their customers each year on average. According to Investp,

it costs 5 times as much to attract a new customer, than to keep an existing one.

Your company is just like the water bucket below. Before adding more water (new customers), it’d be logic to fill the holes first! (dissatisfied customers leaving). You should always focus on the low hanging fruits first!

Keep your customers

Since you probably don’t want to lose your customers, it’s very important to make sure they are happy. By asking for their feedback, you will be aware of their satisfaction level. This means you are able to identify your dissatisfied customers and fix the issue. The key here is to act as fast as possible before the small niggle becomes a serious problem that is close to impossible to fix. By doing so, you are proactive and it’s easier to keep your customers happy and loyal.

More business

As you probably know by now, happy customers are your best marketing. So… why not create as many happy customers as possible?
By making sure your customers are happy, you increase the word of mouth created by your customers. Word of mouth recommendations leads to more new business and it costs you absolutely nothing. At the same time, keeping your customers happy helps you make sure that they will come back and buy again from you.

Higher motivation

We all like to get praised. Your employees are no different!
When a customer praise team members, make sure to share it with them and the whole team! It will give your employee a real motivation boost and indicates that he/she is doing a great job. The rest of the team will work harder to get praised too!

Higher online conversions

Prospects for your business will initially trust your customers more than you. If your customers say positive things about your products/services, your prospects are more likely to convert. That being said, it’s very important to publish your customers’ testimonials on your website. Whenever a customer gives a good feedback that’d be valuable to your prospects, ask them to publish it online. You should also create case studies with your most successful customers and publish them on your website. It will definitely increase your conversion rate.

Improve constantly

This one is by far the most important. You can have the best marketing strategies in place, but if you’re not offering great products/services, you won’t make it in the long run. In order to offer the best product/service possible, you have to constantly improve. Keep in mind that the goal is to offer great products/services in the eyes of your customers. That being said, your customers are the ones who know how you could improve. That’s where customer feedback helps a lot. Based on what most of your customers think, you can make adjustments in the right direction.

Don’t think of feedback as a one-time deal. It has to be an on-going process. It will be your guide to make sure you keep offering great products/services over time. If a customer is happy today doesn’t mean he/she will be happy 6 months from now. Feedback should be asked to every single customer that use your products/services, on a regular basis.

Customer feedback in summary

In summary, it’s crucial to get feedback from your customers. Inevitably, some customers will have a bad experience and you need to be aware of the situation. Since it costs 5 times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one, you should always start by keeping your customers happy before spending a dime on acquiring new ones.

First of all, customer feedback makes you proactive and help you keep your customers happy and loyal. By making sure your customers are happy, you also increase the word of mouth created by your customers which leads to more business. Also, positive feedbacks motivate the whole team and increase your prospect conversions. Last of all, based on what most of your customers think, you can improve your products/services.

Looking for a tool to get customer feedback?

We’ve built a modern tool called Inputkit to help businesses get feedback from their customers.